tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-61988382018-05-16T06:30:02.651-07:00David Chappell's Blog :: OpinariHelping IT professionals understand, use, and make better decisions about enterprise software.David Chappellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05084689775809488566noreply@blogger.comBlogger213125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6198838.post-55408860879881452112017-11-28T08:56:00.000-08:002017-11-28T09:00:35.464-08:00AWS and the Risks of Being a Conglomerate<span style="font-family: inherit;">The launch of Amazon Web Services in 2006 was a milestone in technology innovation. AWS was the harbinger of our now cloud-mad world, where doing new projects solely in on-premises datacenters has become kind of quaint. AWS was--and remains--a great achievement.</span><br /><span style="font-family: inherit;"></span><br /><span style="font-family: inherit;">Any company that can pull off a technological achievement like this must qualify as a technology company, right? Amazon is also a retailer, of course, but even this business is based on the company's unique technical foundation. Given all of this, it's natural to view Amazon as first and foremost a technology firm.</span><br /><span style="font-family: inherit;"></span><br /><span style="font-family: inherit;">But this isn't correct. In fact, Amazon is a conglomerate, one of the few to appear in recent decades. To understand why this is true, think about all the companies that Amazon competes with. The diagram below shows some of the most important.</span><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-OeL2kp2G58M/WhdIrnSyJ_I/AAAAAAAAAHY/HEBdgsHoDZ4-Eld9chaYnqMb6RFFTC9ugCLcBGAs/s1600/Amazon%2Band%2BIts%2BCompetitors.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"></a></div><a href="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-OeL2kp2G58M/WhdIrnSyJ_I/AAAAAAAAAHY/HEBdgsHoDZ4-Eld9chaYnqMb6RFFTC9ugCLcBGAs/s1600/Amazon%2Band%2BIts%2BCompetitors.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; background-color: transparent; color: #0066cc; font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; margin-left: 16px; margin-right: 16px; orphans: 2; text-align: center; text-decoration: underline; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><img border="0" data-original-height="734" data-original-width="1306" height="356" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-OeL2kp2G58M/WhdIrnSyJ_I/AAAAAAAAAHY/HEBdgsHoDZ4-Eld9chaYnqMb6RFFTC9ugCLcBGAs/s640/Amazon%2Band%2BIts%2BCompetitors.jpg" width="640" /></a><b></b><i></i><u></u><sub></sub><sup></sup><strike></strike><br /><b></b><i></i><u></u><sub></sub><sup></sup><strike></strike><span style="font-family: inherit;">In retail, Amazon competes with Walmart, Target, Alibaba, and pretty much every other retailer in the world. In cloud platforms, AWS competes with Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud Platform, and others. Amazon Video competes with Netflix and Hulu and others, while Amazon Devices sells hardware against Apple, Google, Samsung, and more. With the purchase of Whole Foods, Amazon added Safeway, Kroger, Aldi, and other grocers to its roster of competitors, while Amazon Studios competes with Warner Brothers and Columbia and Disney and everybody else who makes filmed entertainment. </span><br /><span style="font-family: inherit;"></span><br /><span style="font-family: inherit;">And while they're not shown in the diagram, Amazon also competes with more companies in even more industries. Their self-publishing business competes with HarperCollins and Hachette and Macmillan, while Amazon Music competes with Apple and Spotify and Pandora. Amazon has even taken on Etsy with Amazon Handmade, and more are sure to come. In fact, it's hard to think of any other business in history that's chosen to compete in so many diverse markets at once. </span><br /><span style="font-family: inherit;"></span><br /><span style="font-family: inherit;">Becoming a conglomerate rather than staying within an industry has some well-known challenges. One of them is losing focus: What is Amazon's core competence? Another is brainpower: No matter how good Jeff Bezos is (and he's clearly really good), can he hire and retain top managers who can successfully compete with the top people at every one of Amazon's competitors?</span><br /><span style="font-family: inherit;"></span><br /><span style="font-family: inherit;">But for AWS in particular, Amazon's role as a broad conglomerate brings some special challenges. AWS is a platform, which means that its success requires other companies to build on it. Yet who's going to build on a platform offered by a company that's also a competitor? AWS is no longer the only cloud platform game in town (as it was when Netflix chose it), so why would any company that competes with Amazon in any area choose to give them money by building on AWS? This simply isn't rational. In fact, I have to believe that if Netflix were starting today, they'd pick somebody other than AWS for just this reason.</span><br /><span style="font-family: inherit;"></span><br /><span style="font-family: inherit;">These conflicts are already starting to appear. The Wall Street Journal has <a href="https://www.wsj.com/articles/wal-mart-to-vendors-get-off-amazons-cloud-1498037402" target="_blank">reported</a> on Walmart's efforts to get its partners to avoid AWS, and as Amazon enters more businesses, we should expect these challenges to increase.</span><br /><span style="font-family: inherit;"></span><br /><span style="font-family: inherit;">And even if Amazon doesn't compete with a firm today, who's to say what might happen in the future? For example, entering the financial services market could make sense for Amazon, given the firm's incredibly broad customer base. This would immediately make them a competitor for thousands of banks and other financial services firms. Because it's hard to see a logical bound to the markets Amazon might enter, almost any business leader could one day wake up to an announcement that he or she has a new and powerful competitor. If this leader has already chosen to build on AWS, which is itself quite profitable, they're now in the position of giving their new competitor more money to use against them. </span><br /><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; display: inline; float: none; font-family: inherit; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: left; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;">Amazon's ability to diversify successfully into so many areas is impressive; Bezos just might be the most successful business leader alive today. But choosing to become a conglomerate has downsides, too. One of them is that some number of potential customers are likely to shy away from AWS just because they don't want to help fund a competitor.</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; display: inline; float: none; font-family: inherit; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: left; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"> </span><br /><br /><b></b><i></i><u></u><sub></sub><sup></sup><strike><br /></strike>David Chappellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05084689775809488566noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6198838.post-8871960973385820162017-04-19T21:59:00.001-07:002017-04-19T22:01:10.626-07:00What, Why, and How: Communicating with Different IT Audiences <span style="font-family: &quot;calibri&quot;;">I spent the first several years of my career writing code. For all of that time, I divided the technology world into two groups: developers and non-developers. I didn’t have much respect for the second group; they were mostly IT managers and marketing people, and they weren’t very technical. Even worse, they didn’t make decisions based solely on which option provided the best technical solution, an approach I thought was inexplicable.</span><br /><span style="font-family: Calibri;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: &quot;calibri&quot;;">When I first&nbsp;moved from writing code into writing books and giving presentations, I held onto this perspective. My audiences were largely developers, and like me, they knew that technical arguments were all that mattered. In fact, we agreed that unless you really understood the details of competing technologies, you could never make good decisions.</span><br /><span style="font-family: Calibri;"><br /></span><div style="margin: 0px 0px 8px;"><span style="font-family: &quot;calibri&quot;;">But I was wrong. I’ve now spent many years working with both groups of people, and I’ve learned that the best technology isn’t necessarily the best choice. Even more important, a deep technical understanding of the options isn’t necessary to make a good decision. I’ve come to have a great deal of respect for IT managers and marketing people.</span><br /><span style="font-family: Calibri;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: &quot;calibri&quot;;">The truth is that different audiences care about different things. When I’m talking to developers, I still focus on </span><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: &quot;calibri&quot;;">what</span></i><span style="font-family: &quot;calibri&quot;;"> a technology is and </span><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: &quot;calibri&quot;;">how</span></i><span style="font-family: &quot;calibri&quot;;">it works—this is&nbsp;what developers care about. But when my audience is IT managers or marketing people or other less technical folks, I briefly describe the </span><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: &quot;calibri&quot;;">what</span></i><span style="font-family: &quot;calibri&quot;;">, then move on to </span><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: &quot;calibri&quot;;">why</span></i><span style="font-family: &quot;calibri&quot;;"> they should care about it. These people don’t need to know how to use something—the what and the why are far more important.</span></div><span style="font-family: Calibri;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: &quot;calibri&quot; , sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; margin: 0px;">If you’re trying to communicate with different IT audiences, you might find it helpful to be clear about this difference. This is especially true if you’re trying to sell something. Developers rarely sign checks—they’re not usually the final decision maker—and telling a deeply technical story to IT managers won’t persuade them. The thing to remember is this: developers care most about <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">what</i> and <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">how</i>, while IT managers care about <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">what</i> and especially <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">why</i>. Give each audience the information it needs--and only the information it needs--and you’re likely to be significantly more successful.</span><b></b><i></i><u></u><sub></sub><sup></sup><strike></strike>David Chappellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05084689775809488566noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6198838.post-6709874611400780332016-10-31T18:11:00.002-07:002016-10-31T18:11:56.635-07:00Why Microsoft is Serious About Open SourceOpen source software has had a huge impact on our industry. Over the last several years, just about every big IT vendor, including Microsoft,&nbsp;has embraced this approach to some degree. Now with Azure, Microsoft is telling us that it doesn't care whether we use open source software or Microsoft's own technologies. <br /><br />Really? Can they be serious? Has Microsoft embraced open source this completely? The answer is yes, and here's why.<br /><br />In the traditional software model, vendors made money through selling software licenses, as shown below.<br /><br /><a href="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-Z7oqpLs20c0/WBfiijo6xGI/AAAAAAAAAGI/J9YW8sJngDwEIjanxT1BL_LIHidQJHbXgCEw/s1600/OSS%2BBlog%2BFigure%2B1.gif" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="130" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-Z7oqpLs20c0/WBfiijo6xGI/AAAAAAAAAGI/J9YW8sJngDwEIjanxT1BL_LIHidQJHbXgCEw/s400/OSS%2BBlog%2BFigure%2B1.gif" width="400" /></a><br /><br /><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div>In this approach, the vendor provides software that runs on the customer's premises, and the customer pays the vendor a one-time license fee. While there might also be annual maintenance fees, the bulk of the money the vendor gets is typically from this initial license.<br /><br />This makes open source software, which typically shrinks or eliminates the license fee, a threat to the vendor's revenue. Steve Balmer famously called open source a cancer. I don't know what was in his mind when he said this, but open source is certainly a cancer on the margins of the traditional license-based software business.<br /><br />Today, though, this model is being replaced by cloud services. The picture now looks like this.<br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-_QBktGUmToI/WBfkgjYSemI/AAAAAAAAAGg/GIgmwDOMCn41ps6fTDsWNAnxj4daN_UwwCLcB/s1600/OSS%2BBlog%2BFigure%2B2.gif" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="155" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-_QBktGUmToI/WBfkgjYSemI/AAAAAAAAAGg/GIgmwDOMCn41ps6fTDsWNAnxj4daN_UwwCLcB/s400/OSS%2BBlog%2BFigure%2B2.gif" width="400" /></a></div><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br />In this situation, the vendor runs the software, and the customer pays a monthly usage fee. Whether the software that provides a cloud service is open source or proprietary or some combination of the two doesn't typically have much impact on what the customer pays. They're paying for the service rather than licensing the software.<br /><br />This is why Microsoft is serious about open source in the cloud. Offering open source services, such as Azure's support for Linux, Node.js, and Hadoop, just gives Microsoft more things for customers to use. Because there's no software license revenue to protect, Microsoft need not care about what kind of software it deploys to provide a cloud service.<br /><br />In other words, offering cloud services using open source software lets Microsoft make more money. And we should always trust Microsoft to do the things that will make them the most money.<br /><br />In the pre-cloud era, open source was spreading into more and more areas, so much so that it was getting harder and harder for software companies to make money from traditional licenses. With the rise of cloud computing, this problem goes away, since vendors are now charging for usage. Maybe the cloud came along just in time to save the software business from the margin-destroying cancer of open source.<br /><br />David Chappellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05084689775809488566noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6198838.post-77255176509606906092016-03-17T13:13:00.001-07:002016-03-17T13:18:52.232-07:00New Whitepapers: The Microsoft Data PlatformAfter decades of dullness, data is back in vogue. As part of this, we're seeing an increasingly diverse set of data technologies available. Taken as a group, these technologies can be viewed as a platform for working with data.<br /><br />I've written a set of three papers describing the Microsoft data platform today. Each paper covers the technologies for working with a specific kind of data--operational, analytical, or streaming--and each one is meant to be readable on its own. They're also meant to hang together as a group, which is why each one starts with the same big-picture diagram of this broad set of technologies. That diagram looks like this:<br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-M4w77-Ajc70/VusRDk9D-mI/AAAAAAAAAFo/Br3KU7Xp7zoy5onfO8LPArkj_AUto7dHQ/s1600/Blog%2BPost%2BDiagram.gif" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="360" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-M4w77-Ajc70/VusRDk9D-mI/AAAAAAAAAFo/Br3KU7Xp7zoy5onfO8LPArkj_AUto7dHQ/s640/Blog%2BPost%2BDiagram.gif" width="640" /></a></div>Each paper describes a particular column in this figure, and all three take a scenario-oriented view--they're not deep technology tutorials. The core audience is IT leaders, but&nbsp;I hope they're useful for anybody looking for a broad survey of what Microsoft offers today for working with data.<br /><br />The papers, all sponsored by Microsoft, are available here:<br /><br /><ul><li><a href="http://www.davidchappell.com/writing/white_papers/Operational_Scenarios_using_the_Microsoft_Data_Platform_v1.1--Chappell.pdf" target="_blank">Operational Scenarios Using the Microsoft Data Platform</a></li><li><a href="http://www.davidchappell.com/writing/white_papers/Analytical_Scenarios_using_the_Microsoft_Data_Platform-J_v1.1--Chappell.pdf" target="_blank">Analytical Scenarios Using the Microsoft Data Platform</a></li><li><a href="http://www.davidchappell.com/writing/white_papers/Streaming_Scenarios_using_the_Microsoft_Data_Platform_v1.1.pdf" target="_blank">Streaming Scenarios Using the Microsoft Data Platform</a></li></ul><br /><br />David Chappellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05084689775809488566noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6198838.post-10142866337350529662016-02-17T09:50:00.001-08:002016-02-17T09:50:05.917-08:00SOA Lives! APIs and MicroservicesA dozen years ago, service-oriented architecture (SOA) was all the rage. The idea of exposing application services in a standard way (which at the time meant via SOAP) was so attractive. Why not remake our software to reflect the then-new agreement on how applications should communicate?<br /><br />But the SOA bubble burst pretty quickly. It turned out that solving the technical problem of communicating between software wasn't enough to solve the real problems. In particular, organizations had a very hard time agreeing on what services applications should expose, how those services should be versioned, and who should pay for what. Much like the software reuse bubble engendered by the advent of objects, and for many of the same reasons, the enterprise dream of universal integration through SOA didn't work out for most organizations.<br /><br />Yet today, the descendants of SOA live on. Rather than focus on enterprise integration, each of these descendants picked up on&nbsp;a stream of SOA thought and took it further, eventually finding real success. The two most important of these are:<br /><ul><li>API management, where cloud-based services provide a standard mechanism for exposing, managing, and controlling access to software of various kinds. The dominant protocol is now REST, not SOAP, but the idea has gone mainstream through offerings from smaller firms (e.g., Apigee) to big ones (e.g., Microsoft and Amazon). In fact, API management has become so important that CA thinks it's worth running ads in the New York Times to explain the idea to non-technical readers.</li><li>Microservices, where applications are built from self-contained chunks of code that interact via interfaces.. Rather than the grand enterprise integration schemes that drove much of the original SOA hype, microservices are primarily about building a single application. This simplifies communication--you can often dispense with authentication, for example--while still providing a way to create manageable, easily deployable application components. Once again, the big vendors are here, providing technologies such as Microsoft's Service Fabric to support this approach.</li></ul>When a new technology appears, it's always hard to know how best to use it. When SOAP first showed up, it kicked off the original SOA thrust toward enterprise integration. This was certainly a worthy goal, but over time, it's become evident that API management and microservices are the approaches that actually worked. It's also become apparent that the complexity of SOAP and its fellow travelers wasn't required--a RESTful approach (or with microservices, maybe something simpler) was usually good enough. <br /><br />The startup that was SOA a dozen years ago has pivoted to become the much more successful API management and microservices of today.<br /><div><br /></div>David Chappellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05084689775809488566noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6198838.post-34586894995914896122015-08-05T15:15:00.001-07:002016-10-31T12:32:04.142-07:00New Whitepaper: Introducing Azure Machine LearningMachine learning has become a big deal. The rise of big data and the massive computing power made possible by cloud computing have made this set of technologies much more useful.<br /><br />But machine learning isn't especially simple. While the basics are fairly straightforward, they're cloaked in odd terminology, phrases like "training data" and "supervised learning". For data scientists, people with years of specialized training, this isn't a problem. For non-specialists, though, the topic can be off putting.<br /><br />To perhaps help with this, I've written a Microsoft-sponsored <a href="http://download.microsoft.com/download/3/B/9/3B9FBA69-8AAD-4707-830F-6C70A545C389/Introducing_Azure_Machine_Learning.pdf" target="_blank">introduction to Azure Machine Learning (ML)</a> . The paper's subtitle is <em>A Guide for Technical Professionals</em>, and that's exactly what it is: an introduction to machine learning for ordinary mortals. Azure ML is likely to become a broadly used technology, and so knowing the basics of machine learning&nbsp;is important. The paper's goal is to help you do this, using Azure ML as a concrete example.David Chappellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05084689775809488566noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6198838.post-32253524462063675122015-04-15T10:40:00.001-07:002015-04-15T10:40:15.508-07:00New Whitepaper: Introducing Azure SearchFor most of us, talking about search makes us think of Google (and maybe Bing). But for people who build applications, talking about search should bring something else to mind: the possibility of building a search box directly into a custom&nbsp;application's user interface. It's possible to do this with Google or Bing, but this approach has some limitations. Rather than relying on existing search services, creating a search UI for which you can control the results can have&nbsp;a lot of appeal.<br /><br />One way to do this is to use <a href="https://www.elastic.co/" target="_blank">Elasticsearch</a> . A simpler option, though, is to use a managed search service such as Microsoft's recently announced Azure Search. Azure Search isn't designed for end users. Instead, it's accessed by applications via a RESTful interface. The goal is to make it straightforward for developers to add search to the UI of the applications they build.<br /><br />I've written a Microsoft-sponsored introduction to Azure Search, available <a href="http://www.davidchappell.com/writing/white_papers/Introducing_Azure_Search-Chappell_v1.1.pdf" target="_blank">here</a>, that&nbsp;explains why adding search to custom apps makes sense. The paper also walks through the basics of the technology, giving you a big-picture sense of what Azure Search does and how it works.<br /><br />I don't know about you, but I love search UIs. If every application I use offered at least the option of search, I'd be a happy man. The availability of Azure Search is a step on the road to making this happen.David Chappellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05084689775809488566noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6198838.post-27298697403553017652014-12-28T20:34:00.001-08:002014-12-28T20:36:35.110-08:00New White Paper: Understanding NoSQL on Microsoft AzureStrictly speaking, this isn't a new whitepaper--it's an update of an earlier paper I wrote on this topic. But Azure's native support for NoSQL has gotten so much broader that <a href="http://www.davidchappell.com/writing/white_papers/Azure-NoSQL-Technologies-v2.0--Chappell.pdf" target="_blank">the paper</a> is almost entirely new.<br /><br />The technologies it covers are:<br /><br /><ul><li>DocumentDB, Azure's document store</li><li>Tables, Azure's key/value store</li><li>HBase, Azure's column family store, and</li><li>HDInsight, Azure's implementation of the Hadoop technology family.</li></ul>As usual, my goal is to provide a big-picture introduction to these technologies. The paper won't provide details on how to use any of them, but I hope it will provide a place to start in deciding whether you need NoSQL and in choosing among the options. <br /><br />If this sounds interesting to you, the paper is available <a href="http://www.davidchappell.com/writing/white_papers/Azure-NoSQL-Technologies-v2.0--Chappell.pdf" target="_blank">here</a>.David Chappellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05084689775809488566noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6198838.post-64616499503013013492014-10-31T13:38:00.002-07:002014-12-28T20:38:13.694-08:00The New Big Picture for Data<span style="font-family: Calibri;">It's a heady time for data. We've seen more change in the last few years than in the previous couple of decades. Because of this, we need to think about data in some new ways.</span><br /><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">For example, the traditional big-picture view of data technologies looks like this:</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; margin: 0in 0in 8pt; text-align: center;"><img border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-82EWqQUF5Uw/VFPwrRZZLhI/AAAAAAAAAEo/OELK4Vu7Y54/s1600/TraditionalDataWorld.gif" height="291" width="400" /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; margin: 0in 0in 8pt; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">In this world view, the operational data that applications use is stored in a relational database. Over time, that relational data gets loaded into a relational data warehouse, where it becomes analytical data. Business intelligence (BI) applications then use that analytical data to help organizations make better decisions .</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">B</span><span style="font-family: Calibri;">ut things are changing. Here’s a more accurate big-picture view of the data world today:<o:p></o:p></span></div><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-XAxNGCQaKLg/VFPxDCntMuI/AAAAAAAAAEw/X5ZXEon03iA/s1600/ModernDataWorld.gif" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-XAxNGCQaKLg/VFPxDCntMuI/AAAAAAAAAEw/X5ZXEon03iA/s1600/ModernDataWorld.gif" height="299" width="640" /></a><br /><span style="font-family: Calibri;">Increasingly, applications are using relational and NoSQL databases for operational data. Turning this operational data into analytical data implies having both a relational data warehouse and an unstructured data lake. BI applications&nbsp;are then able to access both kinds of data to help their users.</span><br /><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;"></span><br /><span style="font-family: Calibri;">And there’s another new piece: search data. As search services become more available (Amazon Web Services and Microsoft Azure both provide them today), building search into every application gets easier. Users love search, and with a managed search service in the cloud, the barrier to entry is significantly lower. But search data is different from either operational data or analytical data—it’s a new category. Accordingly, it’s staking out a new position in the data world.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">Data technologies have shaken off decades of relational torpor; lots of new things are happening. It’s time to look at this world in a new way.<o:p></o:p></span></div>David Chappellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05084689775809488566noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6198838.post-20641669866276489722014-09-12T17:12:00.002-07:002014-09-12T17:12:17.391-07:00Introducing DocumentDB: A NoSQL Database for AzureDocument databases are probably the most popular NoSQL stores today. <a href="http://www.mongodb.org/" target="_blank">MongoDB</a> has lots of users, for example, as do <a href="http://ravendb.net/" target="_blank">RavenDB</a> and others. If you'd like to run these on Azure, you certainly can: MongoDB and RavenDB are both available in the Azure store today.<br /><br />Alongside these, Microsoft now offers DocumentDB, its own document database for Azure. Like most of what Microsoft adds to Azure today, DocumentDB is a managed service, so creating and using databases is relatively straightforward. And like MongoDB, DocumentDB stores JSON documents grouped into collections, although these two document stores also differ in some interesting ways.<br /><br />I've written a Microsoft-sponsored introduction to DocumentDB, available <a href="http://www.davidchappell.com/writing/white_papers/Introducing-DocumentDB--Chappell-v1.1.pdf" target="_blank">here</a>, that gives an overview of the technology. The target audience isn't NoSQL database experts, though. My goal was to explain this technology in a way that would make sense to a .NET developer who works in the relational world, a category that I'd argue is much larger today than the set of NoSQL experts. If that's you, and if you're interested in modern data technologies, you might find the paper worthwhile.David Chappellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05084689775809488566noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6198838.post-38437549456269924122014-09-10T18:55:00.000-07:002014-09-10T18:56:55.067-07:00Visiting Central and Eastern EuropeI'm returning to Europe later this month for a two-week speaking tour, sponsored by Microsoft. I'm doing a variety of talks in different cities, all related to Azure and cloud computing. Here are the cities and dates:<br /><br /><ul><li>September 23: Bratislava</li><li>September 25: Vilnius</li><li>September 30: Kiev</li><li>October 2: Budapest</li><li>October 3: Prague</li></ul>After visiting many times, I've become really fond of this part of the world. I'm looking forward to the tour.David Chappellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05084689775809488566noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6198838.post-10479524571691662262014-08-31T16:58:00.000-07:002014-08-31T17:36:53.081-07:00Conveying Information: The Beauty of SlidedocsI spend a lot of my time working out how best to convey information. Sometimes, this means creating and giving presentations, but I also do quite a bit of writing. <br /><br />Yet deciding how to structure a written document has gotten harder. Books are too slow for most of what I do--updatable papers on the web are better. Still, no matter how good a paper might be, it has no value if people don't read it.<br /><br />And people just don't seem to be reading many papers any more. Ask yourself: When was the last time you sat down and actually read a 20-page whitepaper from start to finish? At best, I'm guessing you skimmed it, looking at the diagrams and reading just the parts that were most interesting. The tl;dr culture has taken over.<br /><br />I'm not complaining here, really; I do the same thing myself.&nbsp;But&nbsp;this change means that that people like me have to find another way to convey information, something that lets us get our points across and actually gets read. It's a challenge.<br /><br />All of which is why I was so happy to discover Nancy Duarte's <a href="http://www.duarte.com/slidedocs/" target="_blank">slidedocs</a>. The core idea--using PowerPoint slides to create a document that's meant to be read rather than presented--isn't entirely new. But what she does with this idea is absolutely beautiful, creating structure that guides writers into an effective, modern approach. The format all but forces you to focus on the diagrams and the main points, which is exactly what most readers want anyway. <br /><br />I've used her slidedocs templates for a couple of projects, and while they're not right for everything, they're really useful&nbsp;for many things. If you haven't seen these yet, I encourage you to take a look. <br /><br />David Chappellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05084689775809488566noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6198838.post-39055015961507801152014-07-09T18:45:00.000-07:002014-07-09T18:45:19.225-07:00Azure for Enterprises: A June 2014 Video from Cloud ExpoI gave a <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WAI6y6xmWKI" target="_blank">general session on Azure for enterprises</a> at the Cloud Expo conference in New York City last month. The target audience was IT leaders, and my goal was to describe why and how enterprises adopt public cloud platforms, using Microsoft Azure as a concrete&nbsp;example.<br /><br />The video is interesting. The beginning looks like it's being recorded with a cellphone camera, complete with&nbsp;people's heads blocking the shot. But by the second minute or so, it settles into a nicely professional recording. Overall, it was a pleasure to be part of the event.<br /><br />David Chappellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05084689775809488566noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6198838.post-56862876560319339862014-06-30T11:32:00.000-07:002014-06-30T11:32:53.898-07:00New VideosTechnology videos can be divisive: Some people love the format, others hate it.<br /><br />If you're in the first group, I've posted a few new ones recently on various topics:<br /><br /><ul><li><div class="CollapsiblePanelTab CollapsiblePanelTabHover" tabindex="0"><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g1XPad2jTeQ" target="_blank">The Business Value of Agile Development</a></div><div class="CollapsiblePanelContent" style="display: none;" tabindex="0"><iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="270" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/g1XPad2jTeQ?rel=0?wmode=transparent" width="480"></iframe>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; </div></li><li><div class="CollapsiblePanelTab" tabindex="0"><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1k7dWhd5_So" target="_blank">The Three Aspects of Software Quality</a></div></li><li><div class="CollapsiblePanelTab" tabindex="0"><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DItf_fZrdRo" target="_blank">The Business Value of Software Quality</a><br /><div class="CollapsiblePanelContent" style="display: none;"><iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="270" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/1k7dWhd5_So?rel=0?wmode=transparent" width="480"></iframe>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; </div></div></li><li><div class="CollapsiblePanelTab" tabindex="0"><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=op75nCXsnbY" target="_blank">Redefining QA</a></div></li><li><div class="CollapsiblePanelTab" tabindex="0"><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wm2BRXz0qHc" target="_blank">Application Platforms and Business Strategy</a></div></li><li class="CollapsiblePanelTab" tabindex="0"><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_zgP43FDfWM" target="_blank">Application Platforms and Business Processes</a></li></ul><div class="CollapsiblePanelTab" tabindex="0">They're all short--mostly under ten minutes--and each one provides my perspective on a current IT topic.<strong></strong></div><div class="CollapsiblePanelTab" tabindex="0"><div class="CollapsiblePanelContent" style="display: none;"><iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="270" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/wm2BRXz0qHc?rel=0?wmode=transparent" width="480"></iframe>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; </div><div class="CollapsiblePanel CollapsiblePanelClosed" id="CollapsiblePanel10"><div class="CollapsiblePanelTab" tabindex="0">&nbsp;</div></div><br /></div>David Chappellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05084689775809488566noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6198838.post-65192598100337848632014-05-02T13:39:00.001-07:002014-05-02T13:39:45.344-07:00Business Analytics Guides for Microsoft SI PartnersBusiness analytics, including data warehousing, BI, and data integration, is a rapidly evolving space. To help its SI partners in this area, Microsoft hired me to write a couple of guides:<br /><ul><li><a href="http://www.davidchappell.com/writing/white_papers/Selling-Projects-on-the-MS-Business-Analytics-Platform--Chappell.pdf" target="_blank">Selling Projects on the Microsoft Business Analytics Platform: A Perspective for Systems Integrators</a> takes a big-picture look at the technologies&nbsp;Microsoft provides here. It also categorizes and describes the typical kinds of projects that SIs can sell on the Microsoft platform.</li><li><a href="http://www.davidchappell.com/writing/white_papers/Creating-Packaged-IP-for-Business-Analytics-Projects--Chappell.pdf" target="_blank">Creating Packaged IP for Business Analytics Projects: A Perspective for Systems Integrators</a> examines various categories of packaged IP, including reusable frameworks, customizable solutions, and Software as a Service (SaaS) applications. The paper then looks at when and why business analytics&nbsp;SIs should consider creating packaged IP.</li></ul>The goal of both papers is to help Microsoft's SI partners for business analytics understand and make better decisions about their practices.David Chappellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05084689775809488566noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6198838.post-89743259666044655162014-04-28T08:49:00.001-07:002014-04-28T08:51:21.177-07:00SQL Forever: Why Data Matters MostI received a royalty check today for my first book, <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Visual-Introduction-SQL-David-Chappell/dp/0471412767/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&amp;ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1398470424&amp;sr=1-1&amp;keywords=a+visual+introduction+to+sql" target="_blank">A Visual Introduction to SQL</a>. The check wasn't very big, but the remarkable thing was that I received it at all.<br /><br />I&nbsp;wrote this book with my friend Harvey Trimble in 1989, when SQL was a relatively new standard. A second edition was published a dozen years later, but it wasn't very different from the first--we added just a few things. Yet the book is still selling. (In fact, it's on an <a href="http://web.mit.edu/11.521/www/11.521_syllabus.html" target="_blank">MIT syllabus</a> for the Spring 2014 semester.) How many other 25-year-old technology books are still selling in more or less their original form? <br /><br />I'm not making any claims about the book's quality here (although the <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Visual-Introduction-SQL-Harvey-Trimble/product-reviews/0471616842/ref=dp_top_cm_cr_acr_txt?ie=UTF8&amp;showViewpoints=1" target="_blank">Amazon&nbsp;</a> <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Visual-Introduction-SQL-David-Chappell/product-reviews/0471412767/ref=dp_top_cm_cr_acr_txt?ie=UTF8&amp;showViewpoints=1" target="_blank">reviews</a> are nice). What I'm impressed by is the longevity and the stability&nbsp;of SQL. Whatever NoSQL enthusiasts might wish, SQL is still a core technology in our industry, and it will be for a long time to come.<br /><br />Why is this? One big reason is that the heart of IT isn't code--it's data. In fact, before the rise of the term "information technology", our field was called "data processing". Sometimes I wish that we still used that name, if only because it emphasized what was most important. <br /><br />Yes, programming languages matter, and flashy interfaces on cool mobile devices are great, but none of these has much value without useful data to work on. And once data is stored in a particular form, such as relational tables, it's usually hard to change that form--hence the longevity of SQL.<br /><br />Given all of this, I wouldn't be surprised to see our book still selling five or ten years from now.&nbsp;Maybe it's&nbsp;time to get to work on a third edition.<br /><br /><br />David Chappellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05084689775809488566noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6198838.post-65634000560024602262014-03-07T10:49:00.002-08:002014-03-07T10:49:24.192-08:00A Discussion about ALM and Modern AppsI had a chance to talk with Richard Campbell and Carl Franklin for an episode of their ongoing <a href="http://dotnetrocks.com/Default.aspx" target="_blank">Dot Net Rocks</a> podcasts. They are incredibly smart guys, and so diverse. (If you haven't heard any of Carl's music, you really need to: Start <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tpCa44mOAXo" target="_blank">here</a> and <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?annotation_id=annotation_99117005&amp;feature=iv&amp;src_vid=xMYSDUeWy_U&amp;v=mdB9R0MGW34" target="_blank">here</a>.)<br /><br />We met after I'd just given a keynote (at the <a href="http://www.computerhistory.org/" target="_blank">Computer History Museum</a>, a very cool place) about the rise of devices and services apps and what this implies for application lifecycle management. Accordingly, this is what we talked about.<br /><br />The podcast is <a href="http://dotnetrocks.com/default.aspx?showNum=956" target="_blank">here</a>.David Chappellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05084689775809488566noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6198838.post-61500442076802963352014-03-02T09:12:00.001-08:002014-03-02T09:12:09.058-08:00Barriers to the Public Cloud: A Short InterviewDavid Giard, formerly a Sogeti consultant and now a technical evangelist at Microsoft,&nbsp;does an interesting video series called <a href="http://technologyandfriends.com/SubText/Default.aspx" target="_blank">Technology and Friends</a>. He interviewed me for this series a few weeks ago, where we talked mostly about the barriers to the public cloud.<br /><br />It was a pleasure talking with David, and if you're interested, you can watch our conversation <a href="http://technologyandfriends.com/SubText/archive/2014/02/24/tf306.aspx" target="_blank">here</a>.David Chappellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05084689775809488566noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6198838.post-47751911486689857442014-02-28T11:12:00.001-08:002014-02-28T11:15:29.790-08:00A Perspective on XamarinI've been looking at <a href="https://xamarin.com/" target="_blank">Xamarin</a> recently, a company that provides technology to build apps for iOS, Android, Windows Phone, and other platforms. The diagram below summarizes&nbsp;one way to&nbsp;think about their offering compared to other popular&nbsp;alternatives. (Click on the diagram for a more readable version.)<br /><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-yMUKvSmV5WU/UxAMMdk4hPI/AAAAAAAAADo/OmPu6zHcq8k/s1600/Mobile.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-yMUKvSmV5WU/UxAMMdk4hPI/AAAAAAAAADo/OmPu6zHcq8k/s1600/Mobile.jpg" height="150" width="400" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">&nbsp;</div>Suppose you want to create an app that runs on iOS, Android, and Windows Phone. One way to do this is to create a portable HTML5/JavaScript app. As the diagram's first row&nbsp;shows, this lets you work in just one language and build just one app. These benefits (shown in green) are balanced by some significant limitations (shown in red). HTML5/JavaScript apps provide only a generic web-based user interface rather than a native UI for each device, and they allow only limited access to native&nbsp;functions on the device, such as the camera. They also can't be in&nbsp;app stores--you've got to find some other way to distribute them.<br /><br />An alternative is to create a native app for each platform, as shown in the diagram's second row. This requires working in three languages to create three different apps, which is significantly more complicated, but it has some real advantages. Your app can now have a native user interface for each device, and it&nbsp;can fully access whatever functions the device provides. Native apps can also, of course, be in app stores. <br /><br />Both of these approaches have some green aspects and some red aspects--pros and cons. Wouldn't it be nice if there was a solution that included only the green from both options? This is what Xamarin aspires to.<br /><br />With Xamarin, you build one app in one language--C#--giving you a single main codebase. But you also customize this app for each platform. You create a native UI for each device, for example, and your app can&nbsp;access whatever device-specific functions it needs. The result can also be in the various vendor's app stores.<br /><br />Even though Xamarin tries to offer the best aspects of the other two approaches, there's still some pain--you aren't really building just one app. Still, you can reuse some (maybe even most) of the app's code across all three platforms, which is likely to simplify the task of creating and maintaining a mobile app.<br /><br />Xamarin is certainly seeing some success, which suggests that this technology is appealing to a chunk of developers. And in any case, the approach they've taken, providing a middle ground between the two most common options today, is&nbsp;definitely interesting.David Chappellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05084689775809488566noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6198838.post-21703437582449520262014-01-31T19:31:00.001-08:002014-01-31T19:37:25.001-08:00Gartner's 2014 MQ for PaaS: Organizing the ChaosI don't envy the Gartner analysts whose job it was to put together their new <a href="http://www.gartner.com/technology/reprints.do?id=1-1P502BX&amp;ct=140108&amp;st=sb" target="_blank">Magic Quadrant on PaaS</a>. Even defining PaaS is challenging--different vendors provide quite different offerings--and so figuring out how to position this diverse bunch on an MQ couldn't have been easy.<br /><br /><img alt="Figure 1.Magic Quadrant for Enterprise Application Platform as a Service" src="http://imagesrv.gartner.com/reprints/254900/254917/254917_1.png;pvdbe9db506939ead5" height="400" width="400" /><br /><br />The only easy part is choosing the leaders: Salesforce's Force.com and Microsoft's Windows Azure. Unlike Gartner's latest&nbsp;<a href="http://bit.ly/2013-cloud-mq" target="_blank">IaaS MQ</a>, which put Amazon off by itself in the upper right corner, the PaaS MQ (correctly, I think) indicates that nobody's really that far ahead in the PaaS market. <br /><br />What's most interesting to me, though, is Gartner's decision to put Salesforce well ahead of Windows Azure. This perhaps&nbsp;stems directly from the MQ's stated focus: It's for enterprise PaaS applications. An MQ focused on ISV PaaS apps might well have put Windows Azure ahead of Force.com, while one balanced across enterprise and ISVs would likely have shown them neck and neck in the leader's quadrant. <br /><br />For enterprises, though, the MQ's authors put substantial weight on the easy-to-use graphical tools that Force.com provides for building applications. Windows Azure PaaS is&nbsp;oriented toward&nbsp;lower-level development using&nbsp;C# or JavaScript or some other programming language. None of this&nbsp;is outside today's enterprise development world, of course, but these technologies do require a higher level of developer skill than Force.com. In Gartner's terminology, Windows Azure provides a <em>high-control</em> developer experience, while Force.com provides a <em>high-productivity</em> environment. ISVs are more likely to opt for control, which can make Windows Azure a more attractive choice for them.<br /><br />As Gartner points out in the report, however, Microsoft also offers a direct competitor to Force.com with xRM. Available both in the cloud and on-premises with Dynamics CRM, xRM offers the same kind of graphical tools that the MQ's authors admire in Force.com. Yet for reasons I've never understood, Microsoft doesn't push xRM as a cloud platform. One likely path to improving Microsoft's position in this MQ is to change this, making clear that Microsoft offers a high-productivity environment alongside Azure's high-control approach. <br /><br />In giving Salesforce the lead, Gartner&nbsp;puts a lower priority on the risks of cloud lock-in, an area where Windows Azure outshines the cloud-only&nbsp;Force.com. And the report&nbsp;only briefly mentions a benefit of Force.com that I'd argue has been critically important to its success: the ability of Force apps to easily use data that's already stored in the cloud. Once an organization buys into Salesforce.com CRM, as so many have, they're obliged to keep lots of interesting information in the cloud. If the organization then wants to build new enterprise applications that use this data, the obvious home for that new code is Force.com. Unlike the other vendors in this MQ, Salesforce's SaaS success drags its PaaS platform along with it.<br /><br />A few more thoughts:<br /><ul><li>Putting Google as a challenger just outside the leader's quadrant must have been a tough call. Still, I think this is exactly right. App Engine is still too narrowly focused, especially for an enterprise-oriented MQ, to qualify as a leader today. </li><li>Some inconsistency seems unavoidable in putting together an analysis covering such a diverse market. For example, the report says that "The combined selling of Google Apps (SaaS) and Google Cloud Platform (IaaS and PaaS) is a promising business opportunity", listing this under <em>Strengths</em> for Google. For Microsoft, however, Gartner observes that "Spreading its efforts across a wide range of IaaS, PaaS and SaaS offerings dilutes focus", listing this as a <em>Caution</em>. Which is it? Is offering all three varieties of cloud service good or bad? The answer, I suppose, is that it depends on how well a company does it.</li><li>And finally, where is Amazon's Elastic Beanstalk? Perhaps it doesn't qualify as PaaS from Gartner's perspective (a view that I would dispute), or perhaps Amazon chose not to participate in the MQ. Whatever the situation, Amazon has historically been the best in the cloud&nbsp;industry at figuring out and quickly filling customer needs. The company's apparent&nbsp;lack of emphasis on PaaS says something interesting&nbsp;about its view of the prospects for this market.</li></ul><br /><br />David Chappellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05084689775809488566noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6198838.post-313376646496898732013-12-31T06:42:00.000-08:002013-12-31T06:42:41.067-08:00Keeping Up: My Current Favorite ResourcesThe central challenge in our profession is keeping up with technology change. Whatever your job, wherever you are in your career, you need to learn lots of new things every year. If you don't, your career is guaranteed to be suboptimal (and probably short).<br /><br />Along with following the right people on Twitter and reading the trade press, I've come to depend on two subscription services:<br /><ul><li><a href="http://www.safaribooksonline.com/" target="_blank">Safari Books Online</a>: For about the cost of one technical book a month, I now have access to an enormous library of current titles on pretty much every subject. Technical blog posts&nbsp;are useful, but for really understanding something, nothing beats a good book. Everybody in IT should subscribe to this service--it's just great.</li><li><a href="http://www.pluralsight.com/training" target="_blank">Pluralsight</a>: Live training seminars can be wonderful and inspiring, but they're also expensive and time consuming. Web-based training has taken over much of this market, and Pluralsight appears to be the leader. Their audio-over-slides style is simple and works well, and their library is large and growing. I'm especially impressed with how rapidly they get courses posted on hot new topics. And like Safari, their monthly subscription fee for individuals&nbsp;is about the same as buying one book a month, something that all of us should be doing anyway. I've done a couple of courses for Pluralsight, so I get the service for free, but even&nbsp;if this weren't true, I'd happily be a paying subscriber.</li></ul>Along with these, I'm always looking for new ways to keep up. What are your favorite ways to stay current? Feel free to let me know in the comments.David Chappellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05084689775809488566noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6198838.post-36640881114279110842013-11-25T17:05:00.000-08:002013-11-25T17:05:03.041-08:00Understanding NoSQL Technologies on Windows AzureThe NoSQL wave began in the cloud, and so you'd expect cloud platforms--including Windows Azure--to support these technologies. To help people understand the Windows Azure NoSQL options, I've written a Microsoft-sponsored white paper that surveys the topic. <br /><br /><a href="http://www.davidchappell.com/writing/white_papers/Windows_Azure_NoSQL_Technologies_v1.0--Chappell.pdf" target="_blank">Understanding NoSQL Technologies on Windows Azure</a> looks at both the native options, such as Windows Azure Tables, and the open source databases that can run in Windows Azure VMs, e.g., MongoDB. The paper focuses on what these technologies are and why you'd use them, rather than how to use them, and&nbsp;the goal is to help you understand and make better choices about&nbsp;using NoSQL databases on Windows Azure.David Chappellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05084689775809488566noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6198838.post-71088930938144674862013-11-12T15:17:00.000-08:002013-11-12T15:19:30.717-08:00It's a Cloud World: Are Hosters Doomed?Flying around Europe this fall, I met a lot of worried hosters. In the cloud computing era, what kind of future does a relatively small local hoster have? Given that they're now competing against behemoths like Amazon Web Services and Windows Azure, do they even have a future?<br /><br />Hosters definitely have a future, but it's different from their present in some ways. Here are some of their challenges:<br /><ul><li>Cloud platform providers like Microsoft and Amazon can offer lower prices. While this isn't always true today, it will be in a few years as the cutthroat competition between these giants continues to force prices down. Most hosters won't have anything like the scale and automation of the big cloud providers, and so hosters' higher costs&nbsp;are likely to require them to charge higher prices.</li><li>Some cloud platform providers, such as Microsoft, have relationships with customers that a typical hoster can only dream of. A Microsoft salesperson with a Windows Azure quota is a fierce competitor for a small hoster.</li></ul>But hosters will survive--they also have some advantages. These advantages include:<br /><ul><li>In-country datacenters. Even though regulations that constrain data to remain within a single country's borders are likely to be loosened, this will take time (and it may never happen for some kinds of data). For an organization that wants to outsource its computing infrastructure, this reality constrains them to use&nbsp;a hoster datacenter within their national borders. Large as they are, the big cloud vendors will never have datacenters in every country.</li><li>The ability to offer customized services. Cloud platform vendors provide massive, automated, low-cost computing platforms. To do this, they rely on consistency--they don't do much customization. Local hosters, by contrast, rely on personalized service. They can potentially do anything the customer wants, including providing both physical and virtual machines, installing custom hardware, and more.</li><li>Better SLAs, at least for some customers. I don't mean that hosters will be more reliable--they probably won't be--but they can offer SLAs that provide compensation for business losses. SLAs from the big cloud platform vendors just give you discounts for downtime--they're about <a href="http://davidchappellopinari.blogspot.co.at/2013/08/cloud-slas-pricing-not-promises.html" target="_blank">pricing, not promises</a>. For some customers, this can be attractive.</li><li>The potential for better support. Especially in smaller countries, local hosters can offer things like support in the local language. The overall relationship with customers might be more personal, too, with the potential for long-term relationships with the people who run the hosters. Big cloud platforms may be cheap, but they also tend to be remote and impersonal.</li></ul>Should hosters welcome the rise of global-scale cloud platforms? Probably not--they're strong competitors in some parts of their business. But are the countless&nbsp;local hosters scattered across the world doomed? No. They have some advantages that the big guys don't. Even in a cloud world, hosters have a significant role to play.David Chappellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05084689775809488566noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6198838.post-22714325296856344352013-10-17T13:18:00.003-07:002013-10-17T13:18:31.260-07:00Visiting Central and Eastern EuropeI leave Saturday for a speaking tour in central and eastern Europe. I'm talking about cloud computing with systems integrators and IT leaders, and I'm also&nbsp;participating in a few conferences. If you're in the area and interested, I hope to see you there.<br /><br />The cities and dates are:<br /><ul><li>October 22:&nbsp;Warsaw (<a href="http://www.mtskonferencja.pl/index.html" target="_blank">Microsoft Technology Summit</a>)</li><li>October 24: Moscow</li><li>October 29-30:&nbsp;Athens (<a href="http://www.info-com.gr/" target="_blank">Infocom 2013</a>)</li><li>October 31: Prague</li><li>November 5: Bratislava</li><li>November 6: Bucharest (<a href="http://www.mssummit.ro/" target="_blank">Microsoft Summit 2013</a>)</li></ul>David Chappellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05084689775809488566noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6198838.post-41256596974336138572013-09-24T10:21:00.004-07:002013-09-24T10:21:50.894-07:00A Great Source for Information about Software QualitySoftware quality is a fundamentally important topic, one that I've <a href="http://www.davidchappell.com/writing/white_papers/The_Business_Value_of_Software_Quality-v1.0-Chappell.pdf" target="_blank">written</a> <a href="http://www.davidchappell.com/writing/white_papers/The_Three_Aspects_of_Software_Quality_v1.0-Chappell.pdf" target="_blank">about</a> <a href="http://www.davidchappell.com/writing/white_papers/Redefining_QA--Chappell.pdf" target="_blank">some</a>. I was recently clued in to the <a href="http://www.pnsqc.org/" target="_blank">Pacific Northwest Software Quality Conference</a>. I've never participated in this event (which is a shame--it looks really good), but I'm deeply impressed by the breadth and depth of the papers and presentations in their <a href="http://www.pnsqc.org/past-conferences/" target="_blank">archives</a>.<br /><br />If you're interested in this area, I encourage you to take a look.David Chappellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05084689775809488566noreply@blogger.com0